Travel Guide Bełżec

The locality of Bełżec became infamous during the tragic events of World War II. Completed in the late winter of 1942, the Bełżec extermination camp was part of Operation Reinhard (or Aktion Reinhard), the Jewish extermination plan of the General Government of Poland, the part of the territory of the Republic of Poland annexed, but not incorporated, into the Third Reich and which constituted a region in Greater Germany. Good rail connections and the proximity of a large Jewish community in the districts of Lvov, Krakow and Lublin determined the choice of the site. Carried out by SS officials and the Lublin police, the cleansing operations began in Bełżec on March 17, 1942, with the Jewish communities of Lublin and Lvov, now in Ukraine, being the first to be deported there. From March to December 1942, approximately 500,000 people were killed by the Nazis in the Bełżec extermination camp. Most of them were Polish Jews, but among them were also Jews from Germany, Austria and Slovakia. After the camp in Bełżec was dismantled, the Germans plowed the land, built a farm, planted trees and sowed to erase all traces of the camp. The site is considered one of the most striking memorials in the world, and it is terrifying to imagine that such horrors could be so easily erased.